Last year I was a judge in the final round of the Imagine Cup at TechEd in Barcalona, Spain. It was a great thrill to be involved. I am honored to be a judge in a regional round tomorrow at FordhamUniversity.

Got up early this morning and did an 8 mile run over the Golden Gate bridge and back to the center of town with tri pal Andy Catlin. Put me in a good mood to see the VSLive keynote on Yukon Business Intelligence by Microsoft PM Bill Baker. Besides enhancements to Reporting Services and DTS (DTS will be renamed), Yukon will help bring BI to the masses with UDM:

There will be “Visual Studio Controls for Reporting Services“ in Visual Studio 2005 where you can embed reports into ASP pages and Windows Forms much easier. There is navigation, ad hoc query and other cool controls to play with.

DTS is completely rewritten. Total event driven and based on the CLR.

The Unified Dimension Model is new and great. The UDM basically combines OLAP and the relational worlds into one programming model that will truly bring OLAP to you and me.

Can't wait. :)

I give three talks today: SQL Server Notification Services, XQuery in Yukon and ADO.NET Best Practices. I am a busy kid today.

$613 million that is? The European Commission has fined Microsoft a record $613 million. What are they going to do with the money, further subsidize Airbus? Further subsidize French farmers? Lower German taxes? Give the money to Linux “research”? Send troops to Iraq?

I think that Microsoft is victim of anti-American sediment in Europe right now. The fine is excessive. It surpasses fines the Commission has imposed on price-fixing cartels and it sends the wrong message about antitrust enforcement priorities.

The US Attorney General’s Office agrees with me. "Imposing antitrust liability on the basis of product enhancements and imposing 'code removal' remedies may produce unintended consequences," US Assistant Attorney General Pate said. "Sound antitrust policy must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies. A contrary approach risks protecting competitors, not competition, in ways that may ultimately harm innovation and the consumers that benefit from it."

Come on now, Media Player? It sucks. Everyone downloads MusicMatch or WinAmp anyway. IE beat Netscape since Netscape took way too long to innovate (was years in-between releases). Media Player sucks and nobody really uses it.

So European Commission you showed your true colors Maybe the US should fine Airbus for dumping and price fixing.

This new virus is really causing problems. I am getting a fair amount every hour. ORCSWeb blocks them at the gateway and sends me a warning. Time to hunt down virus writers and throw them in jail.

The Declude Virus software on orcsweb.com has reported that you were sent an E-mail from ca@digsigtrust.com, containing the : W32/Netsky.P@mm virus in the document09.zip attachment. The subject of the E-mail was "Re: Proof of concept".

The E-mail containing the virus has been deleted to prevent further damage.

In this workshop, we'll cover the basics and fine points of ADO .NET, seen from both Windows Forms and ASP.NET vantage points. After a brief introduction, we'll cover connected and disconnected data access, ADO .NET data binding, strongly-typed DataSets, and the XML features of ADO.NET. We'll then take a close look at using ADO .NET and SQL Server together, including development of stored procedures, triggers, and functions; advanced T-SQL techniques; and working with SQL Server and COM+ transactions. Attendees of this workshop will also get a high-level look at the forthcoming features of "Yukon," the watershed next release of SQL Server.

The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat.

During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals. In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted. No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration.

We adopted several of these ideas. We committed more funding to counterterrorism and intelligence efforts. We increased efforts to go after al Qaeda's finances. We increased American support for anti-terror activities in Uzbekistan.

We pushed hard to arm the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle so we could target terrorists with greater precision. But the Predator was designed to conduct surveillance, not carry weapons. Arming it presented many technical challenges and required extensive testing. Military and intelligence officials agreed that the armed Predator was simply not ready for deployment before the fall of 2001. In any case, the Predator was not a silver bullet that could have destroyed al Qaeda or stopped Sept. 11.

We also considered a modest spring 2001 increase in funding for the Northern Alliance. At that time, the Northern Alliance was clearly not going to sweep across Afghanistan and dispose of al Qaeda. It had been battered by defeat and held less than 10 percent of the country. Only the addition of American air power, with U.S. special forces and intelligence officers on the ground, allowed the Northern Alliance its historic military advances in late 2001. We folded this idea into our broader strategy of arming tribes throughout Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban.

Let us be clear. Even their most ardent advocates did not contend that these ideas, even taken together, would have destroyed al Qaeda. We judged that the collection of ideas presented to us were insufficient for the strategy President Bush sought. The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or "roll back" the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to "eliminate" the al Qaeda network. The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was "tired of swatting flies."

Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures. Our plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived. It focused on the crucial link between al Qaeda and the Taliban. We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime. The strategy focused on the key role of Pakistan in this effort and the need to get Pakistan to drop its support of the Taliban. This became the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration -- not Iraq, not the ABM Treaty, but eliminating al Qaeda.

Before Sept. 11, we closely monitored threats to our nation. President Bush revived the practice of meeting with the director of the CIA every day -- meetings that I attended. And I personally met with George Tenet regularly and frequently reviewed aspects of the counterterror effort.

Through the summer increasing intelligence "chatter" focused almost exclusively on potential attacks overseas. Nonetheless, we asked for any indication of domestic threats and directed our counterterrorism team to coordinate with domestic agencies to adopt protective measures. The FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration alerted airlines, airports and local authorities, warning of potential attacks on Americans.

Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists. The FAA even issued a warning to airlines and aviation security personnel that "the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States, remains a concern."

We now know that the real threat had been in the United States since at least 1999. The plot to attack New York and Washington had been hatching for nearly two years. According to the FBI, by June 2001 16 of the 19 hijackers were already here. Even if we had known exactly where Osama bin Laden was, and the armed Predator had been available to strike him, the Sept. 11 hijackers almost certainly would have carried out their plan. So, too, if the Northern Alliance had somehow managed to topple the Taliban, the Sept. 11 hijackers were here in America -- not in Afghanistan.

President Bush has acted swiftly to unify and streamline our efforts to secure the American homeland. He has transformed the FBI into an agency dedicated to catching terrorists and preventing future attacks. The president and Congress, through the USA Patriot Act, have broken down the legal and bureaucratic walls that prior to Sept. 11 hampered intelligence and law enforcement agencies from collecting and sharing vital threat information. Those who now argue for rolling back the Patriot Act's changes invite us to forget the important lesson we learned on Sept. 11.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the president, like all Americans, wanted to know who was responsible. It would have been irresponsible not to ask a question about all possible links, including to Iraq -- a nation that had supported terrorism and had tried to kill a former president. Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11, the president told his National Security Council on Sept. 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to Sept. 11 would be to target al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Because of President Bush's vision and leadership, our nation is safer. We have won battles in the war on terror, but the war is far from over. However long it takes, this great nation will prevail.

Oh boy this is going to be awesome. The 2004 North Africa Developer conference is only about 3 weeks away and I can't wait. The NDC will feature the future Microsoft technologies : Longhorn, Whidbey and Yukon, alongside standard.Net development topics. I will be presenting on Mobility (ASP .NET Mobile Web Forms/Controls), Yukon TSQL Enhancements, and SQL Server 2000 Notification Services.

The NDC in Tunis was my favorite event last year.

My second time to Casablanca, Morocco and I plan to party hard with my fellow Regional Directors:

Let us not appease the terrorists like Chamberlain did Hitler in Munich. We are in this together, terrorism knows no boarders. Being a New Yorker who watched 9/11 unfold with my own eyes and being in Europe on 3/11, I have to say terrorism is a global problem that must be attended to by us all, just like World War II.

From Interoperability to Migration: SQL Server and Linux Databases Working Together

"They" say it can be done, now see it in action! This session demonstrates how SQL Server can acts as the gateway to interoperability with Linux databases such as DB2 and Oracle! You'll see a fully functioning Linux-based web application using Red Hat Linux, Apache, PHP and Oracle sharing data with an identically implemented ASP.NET application using SQL Server. This session shows not only how to interoperate, but to use these interoperate capabilities to facilitate a seamless migration from the Linux based system to SQL Server and Windows . This is how migration was meant to be!

Today I updated my blog s/w to 1.4 since Clemens forced me to. :) I have some issues so comments don't work yet and such. I am going to also make some changes to the source code, maybe make it SQL Servere based and call it die Blog. hee hee

Nobody likes terrorists, something that I was unfortunately reminded of during my time here in Europe. Basically violence is not the answer to getting your cause heard.

I made the same claim against Environmental Terrorism. Most people would consider themselves an “environmentalist” (as I do) but prefer to protect the environment by recycling and giving money to organizations like the World Wildlife Fund. I do hate when Greenpeace or some other more radical group blows up a McDonalds or performs some other act of Environmental Terrorism.

Last month Microsoft was the victim of Corporate Terrorism plain and simple. Its source code was leaked in the Internet. I have no proof, but I bet it was done by people trying to prove a point that Open Source is “better” than closed source. These are nothing more than Corporate Terrorists, trying to hold a company hostage or bring it down.

I do not condemn the Open Source movement (doing so would force me to condemn many people important to me, including my roommate) just like I don’t condemn all Environmentalists when there is environmental terrorism (and I am not going to touch the hot potato of Islamic terrorism in this entry, stay tuned for my thoughts on Madrid in a later piece). But this clearly is a gross violation of IP and just plain old wrong. Whoever did this can you look at yourself in the mirror anymore? Who do you see back?

(This report was done via the free Internet in Paris, yes the Internet should be free everywhere!)

eWeek ran an article on Friday saying how users are willing to wait for Yukon and Whidbey. Well duh.

I blogged on this last week and someone disagreed with me, but I stick by my original statements. Think of it this way, Whidbey is due in early 2005 (1st half so let’s estimate April/May). Visual Studio 2003 shipped in April 2003, that is ONLY 2 YEARS between cycles. Part of me wants them to push it back again. I think it is a good thing that product cycles are getting longer. Software is more complex and needs the time for feedback and QA.

I showed off Whitehorse today in the Netherlands at CTTP. Whitehorse’s European debut. Developers were super excited but did not care that it was a year away, they wanted it done right. I had to demo Whitehorse today from an AVI I took of the screen shots on my computer back at the office, I could not get the Virtual Image to install without issue on my laptop, more a problem with my laptop than the image. (I hate DELL). So the Dutch were treated to the same demos I did at DevDays just without any bugs, errors, crashes, etc!

So my blog is apparently very well read in the Netherlands, it was quoted in a Dutch paper last week.

There was a moment of science today at noon all across Europe for the victims of the Madrid bombings on Thursday.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that Whidbey and Yukon will now have a ship date of the first half of next year. Whidbey’s official name will now be “Visual Studio 2005” and Yukon’s official name will be “SQL Server 2005”.

Predictably, blogland and the media made an event out of this. Why I ask?

So do we as developers care that the ship dates have moved? Not so much. We are still learning all the new stuff in the current versions of the products! Also anyone who has ever worked on a software project knows all well about management promising products before even talking to the development team about how long the development effort is going to take.

I very feel sorry for Microsoft, but whenever they announce a “slip” in a produce schedule, I get reminded of like the million times I had to announce a slip in a development effort to a customer of mine.

There are lots of things to beat up Microsoft about, but not this one. Let it go.

A while ago I predicted that Sun Microsystems was headed to disaster when Moody’s lowered Sun’s credit rating to that of a Junk bond. Well Friday S&P did the same. Hopefully Sun will wake up and smell the coffee on Linux, when they have a real Linux strategy, they will no longer be doomed.

In 1985, two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates became the first climbers to summit Siula Grande (appx 22,000’) in the Peruvian Andes. On the way down Joe took a bad fall and broke his leg very badly. Simon who should have left Joe attempted an amazing rescue effort. Simon tied two ropes together and lowered Joe 300 feet at a time. While on belay, Joe fell off a cliff and was hanging while Simon’s anchor was getting more and more unstable. At some point Simon made the very difficult (but correct) decision to cut the rope. Joe fell into a crevasse and was presumed dead.

Simon made the very difficult solo descent back to their base camp. Joe meanwhile with a broken leg and no food or water climbed out of the crevasse with his two ice tools (what most people would call an ice axe, but an ice axe is actually something different) and only 1 good leg. This was an amazing climb, probably the most amazing one in all of rock/ice climbing history.

The movie Touching the Void, documents this heroic and epic ascent, rescue effort and Joe’s climb out of the crevasse and days long crawl over the glacier back to base camp. Went to see it last night with Linda and John and lets just say we were all pretty moved. The strength and courage to stay alive and never give up was very motivating. It also reminded me of the lessons I learned on Everest, both in climbing and living your life. Somehow after seeing this movie the little things in life that bog your down don’t seem to matter all that much.

Remember when Steve B ran around stage and chanted this over and over. Microsoft is all about developers. DevDays in NJ is tomorrow and it is pretty much by developers for developers. Looking foward to showing Whitehorse and BizTalk again.

Last year, more than 70,000 developers across the world attended Tech-Ed (I spoke at 3 of them!) to and this year, between TechEd 2004 and DevDays 2004, another 100,000 developers will gather together to learn the ins and outs of Visual Studio. Simply amazing! Not even counting the MDC in Egypt, Pakistan Dev Conference and NDC in Morocco!

At least according to my quote in InfoWorld, I was interviewed as part of an article on the .NET Report Card (view it here in PDF.)

So after 2 years (.NET shipped just over 2 years ago), where does .NET stand? According to InfoWorld, we are looking at about a B to B+ grade overall (see the report for the details). I speak at lots of conferences and user groups and only talk about .NET and the developers I meet around the world only want to talk .NET and seem to love it and dig in deep. I am also the CTO of a financial services company, where I use .NET every day. I have forgotten what Visual Studio 6.0 even looks like and don’t have it installed on any machine. Am I normal?